The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development expects to issue national technical standards for frozen tra catfish fillets by the year’s end.  – Photo cafef.vn

HÀ NỘI – The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development expects to issue national technical standards for frozen tra catfish fillets by the year’s end.

This announcement pushed back the previous July 2016 release date. The ministry has now asked related offices to finish a decree on standards instead of decree 36/2014/NĐ-CP on rearing and exporting tra fish products, said Vũ Văn Tám, deputy minister of agriculture and rural development.

The standards will detail quality regulations, including rates of glazing and moisture, in order to strictly control the quality of frozen fish products in the future, he said.

The General Department of Fishery, along with the National Agro, Forestry and Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (Nafiqad), have taken responsibility to compile the new decree and will soon submit it to the ministry for Governmental approval, he said.

Tra fish is one of the fishery industry’s key products, but at present this product has faced high competition. Meanwhile, tra fish producers and processors have focused on competition in price, but they have not improved quality of tra fish products. However, the ministry has worked on solutions to promote control of food safety toward the export of seafood products, especially tra and basa fish.

For instance, it issued Decision 3328/QĐ-BNN-QLCL on August 15, 2016 to suspend granting seafood export certificates for products bound for the EU that were made in facilities that EU authorities warned of chemical and anti-biotic residues.

The ministry also issued Decision 2636/QĐ-BNN-QLCL on June 29, 2016 on the inspection and granting of food safety certificates for siluriformes fish, including tra and basa fish exported to the US. According to the decree, Nafiqad would inspect, sample, test and grant food safety certificates for the siluriformes fish before exporting to the US. — VNS